a journal of my journey through fear, action, and life on a quest to find my purpose.

I'm going to start this online journal of mine by exploring my fears and the experience of conquering them, along with any other observations, reflections, thoughts, and feelings that come along the way. If I had to state a goal, it would be to find my purpose. But I have really come to believe that finding my purpose will happen naturally if I just do things every day and keep moving from exactly where I am.

So to get moving... and because I like making spreadsheets in GoogleDocs, I created what I'm currently calling My Fear List by asking myself two questions:

What, when you think about doing it, scares you?

What, when you hear about or see others doing, makes you think or say, "I could never do that" or "I would never do that."

Doing this exercise brought up a lot, and in an effort to create some order to what I was coming up with, I categorized my fears into 8 types:

Type A: have wanted to do, but something was holding me back.

Type B: don't necessarily want to do but recognize that when I hear about/see others doing it, I feel/say "I could never do that" and thus I feel doing it, can be empowering and help me grow.

Type C: have done in the past, but didn't view it as a fear. It may have been the norm for me then or I viewed as something exciting. Now I can't believe I did it and can't imagine doing it again. I'd like to explore why that is and what comes from doing it again.

Type D: have conquered this fear in the past as a fear and thus, know I can do it again.

Type E: not necessarily a fear, so to speak, but recognize that some of my beliefs/opinions are ignorant and based on things I read/hear from media/others vs. personal experience which has led to negative and/or fearful thinking. I have a feeling doing these things and bringing the personal experience into it, will help to reframe my views in a more positive way.

Type F: things I'm scared of that I can't exactly schedule to do on an exact date. Envisioning exercises may help here.

Type G: didn't consciously intend to conquer the fear (or didn't know I had it), but felt the fear while doing it and successfully conquered it.

Type H: a fear I remember having in the past that I either swept under the rug, or haven't thought about. May not need to conquer it, but need to address it.

I also added some other columns so I could easily track and analyze myself in this process. I'm not sure how exactly this spreadsheet will evolve, but in full transparency, I invite you to take a look at My Fear List here. I would apologize if any of it makes you uncomfortable, but I'm not allowed to (see rule #3 in About section).